Blizzard closes down private Burning Crusade server

It took four years to set up and only lasted 4 hours.

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Four years of work for... four hours of activity! That's the painful observation made by Gummy52, a WoW player and programmer in his spare time. For several years, this hard-working individual tried to create his private server to allow players to go back to the time of the first expansion of World of Warcraft, Burning Crusade. His wish? Eventually bring together a small community of 3,000 people and share their play time together.

Yes, but Blizzard would not be Blizzard if they weren't vigilant. And just four hours after the launch of the server, they shut down everything.

Gummy52 responded in an open letter, explaining that he will not contest the decision of the Californian studio: "So why did I make this project? I love the game and community, especially the community. The old game was a great way to meet people and see new faces. It makes me happy, and programming makes me happy. Of course, I am sad that things didn't turn out the way I'd hoped but I don't think I'd change any of the decisions I made. I gambled that we could cap the servers at 3k and enjoy a close community. Sadly, I did not win that gamble."

A story that reminds us that Blizzard doesn't take kindly to private servers, and especially those that allow to replay the 'old' versions of World of Warcraft, Vanilla and Burning Crusade. The closure of this one echoes the Nostarius server which had been closed several months ago, and which allowedplayers to return to the very first version of the game. The case attracted a lot of attention, since players around the world have been calling for 'vintage' servers for quite a long time, something that Blizzard still does not allow, as evident by the closure of the Gummy52 server.

Perhaps one day Blizzard will give in to player demand and create official throwback servers of their own. Would you like to play World of Warcraft like it was 2007?